Chapter 13
End of Days? Religion
and the Environment
No living thing—no plant, microbe, or animal—exists
on this earth without having an impact on the natural world around it.
– Humans are no exception
Human societies vary in how they understand their place in the natural world, their impact on it, and their responsibility to care for it.
Environmentalism and Its
Discontents
Environmentalism is a social movement and
worldview that prioritizes care and preservation of the earth’s natural environment: water, air, forests and other natural landscapes, and wildlife and
animals’ habitats.
Is the environment for human use, to be shaped to our purposes?
Religious Discontents
Are humans masters of nature, shaping nature for human purposes?
Or are we part and parcel of nature, dependent for our survival on the health of the natural
environment?
These contrasting worldviews are embedded to varying degrees in our religious traditions
Religion Finds
Environmentalism…
Most mainstream Protestant denominations have issued policy statements on environmental
responsibility, and many local congregations engage in green activities including recycling and efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Religion Finds
Environmentalism…
Among alternative religions, Wiccans place a high priority on environmentalism: They believe in a close and symbiotic relationship between humans and
nature, their rituals frequently take place outside,
and they emphasize the importance of protecting the earth
. . . But Environmentalism is Leery
of Religion
Environmentalists are often suspicious of religious people
In particular, researchers have homed in on a
Judeo–Christian worldview that is focused on man’s mastery over nature and explored how that
worldview might cause some Christians to lack concern for the environment or to resist efforts to protect the environment
Do Fundamentalist Christians
Care About the Environment?
A Worldview of ―Mastery of Nature‖ the Judeo–Christian creation story espouses a
worldview of ―mastery over nature.‖
In this story, humans are set apart from and above the natural world, and the natural world exists for human use.
Do Fundamentalist Christians Care
About the Environment?
White’s indictment of the Judeo–Christian creation
story and the worldview that it informed drew both praise and criticism. The responses came in two waves. The first came in the years that immediately followed the publication of White’s article, when
scientists, historians, theologians, and social
Do Fundamentalist Christians Care
About the Environment?
The second wave began almost 20 years after the article was published, when sociologists and political scientists began to test empirically the implications of White’s argument.
The First Wave: Acceptance and
Critique of White’s Argument
Much of the early response was positive, in that theologians in a range of denominations and
scholars in a variety of disciplines accepted White’s argument and incorporated it into their own thinking and models about the relationship between humans and environment.
The First Wave: Acceptance and
Critique of White’s Argument
The group proposed a number of changes: smaller family sizes, slower economic growth, an end to the advertising that drives consumerism, more respect for simplicity of living, and the scaling back of
The First Wave: Acceptance and
Critique of White’s Argument
Other groups continue to refute White’s argument,
claiming either a ―stewardship‖ relationship to the earth that sets humans above nature or dismissing the suggestion that humans and the rest of nature are on equal footing.
The Second Wave: Testing “The
Lynn White Hypothesis”
The second wave of response to White’s work began
in 1984 with a series of empirical studies of the main researchable hypothesis that has been drawn from White’s work:
– That Christians—of varying sorts—are less
concerned about the environment than people who are not Christian.
The Second Wave: Testing “The Lynn
White Hypothesis”
Researchers found that people who had strong
personal religious beliefs in God or a higher power were no more or less likely to espouse
environmentalism in attitude or action than people who did not have these beliefs.
Revisiting White: What was His
Point?
White argued that the Judeo–Christian worldview of
human mastery over nature, a worldview that shaped centuries of technological and scientific
development, so pervades modern Western culture
– that even those who are not explicitly religious (in the Southern Baptist sense, for example) have adopted and enacted this belief.
Revisiting White: What was His
Point?
White’s point is deceptively simple: Scientists,
engineers, entrepreneurs, and others— religiously motivated or not—adhere to the belief that humans can master the natural world, which has been
infused with the Judeo–Christian worldview embodied in the creation story.
